Dragon Con was a blast and I felt like the DC Comics and Cultural Studies panel went well. I’ve had a few requests so I’ve posted my paper “Discipline & Punish: Michel Foucault & the Suicide Squad” here. Hopefully I’ll get around to posting my paper from last year some time soon, but until then, enjoy this one.

Atlanta’s Synchronicity Theatre will be presenting Carson Kreitzer’s Lasso of Truth, a play about Wonder Woman and her creator William Moulton Marston. The play will run from September 26-October 19, 2014 at the Synchronicity Theatre’s new location at Peachtree Pointe 1545 Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia. The World’s Second Greatest Detective asked Matt Myers, one of the actors performing in the production.

WXL: Briefly describe your role in Lasso of Truth.

MATT MYERS: I play Guy, who is the owner of a comic store in the 90s. He’s an artist himself, having learned to draw partially from reading Wonder Woman comics, and partially from going to the Rhode Island School of Design. He’s minding his own business one day, when in walks a girl bent on owning the first appearance of Wonder Woman (All-Star Comics #8), and thus his life is changed forever.

It’s a really interesting take on Wonder Woman’s origins and some pretty cool storytelling elements in there. And I get to play a comic shop owner who is not like Comic-Book Guy on the Simpsons.

WXL: What are some of the differences between theatre and comic books as story-telling mediums?

MATT: The luxury of comic books is that you can accentuate things with closeups and angles and using the visual language of comics to convey information very quickly. No closeups in theatre, unless we run at the audience suddenly, or angle changes unless we move the stage. I’m only half joking on that. But theatre has its own conventions to fall back on. Music, sound design, lighting; that can make it a more visceral experience. Both mediums have their own ways of letting you into the minds of the characters, thought-bubbles versus soliloquy. Comics are (generally) a one reader at a time experience, while everyone is experiencing theatre together, so both offer there own types of intimacy with an audience. Honestly, I think they’re more similar than different, though, just from pacing and the types of stories we tell and the types of people who are drawn to them.

WXL: Personally I’ve grown very attached to Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang’s work on Wonder Woman and feel nervous about the Finches taking over the title. Azzarello and Chiang had Wonder Woman standing nearly outside of the DC universe and the Finches intend to tie the title more closely with events with the DC universe as whole. Likewise Wonder Woman will make her first appearance on the silver screen in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Do you prefer Wonder Woman as a stand alone character or as part of the larger DC universe? How do you see her involvement with the larger DC universe affect her and her strength as a character?

MATT: For total transparency, I haven’t really read Wonder Woman since John Byrne rebooted her, and before that, George Perez. Guess I’m dating myself there.

We were discussing at rehearsal the other night why Wonder Woman is a difficult character to write. She’s not only Iconic, but Symbolic. So you can tinker around with the iconic characters (and Lord knows they have) but her symbolism and significance makes it hard to do as much with her. Folks get ticky when you deviate too far from form with her. Look no further than David Finch saying they weren’t focusing on the feminism of Wonder Woman. Folks get upset. Even folks who may not have read Wonder Woman recently or ever. She’s that important, Symbolically. And someone has to keep that torch lit.

So all of that to say, I think it’s important that there’s a Wonder Woman in the DC universe and that the other characters show her reverence. It’s a small but important thing. If Batman and Superman treat her as their equal and not like an equivalent to Aquaman (sorry, Aquaman fans) or the JLA admin (sorry, Flash fans), it’s better for the character. There is no other female character in comics with her kind of cache and power. Still, I understand wanting to give her some distance from the rest of the universe because that frees her up from some of that baggage.

WXL: When the New 52 launched in September 2011, Azzarello and Chiang received a lot of flack for changing Wonder Woman’s origin from daughter of clay to daughter of Zeus. Many critics felt a certain degree of her essence came from her fatherless origins. Having worked with the character’s real life origins and Marston’s own challenges to gender meaning for Lasso of Truth, how important is this detail of Wonder Woman’s origin to you?

MATT: Hmm, that’s an interesting question. Never really thought about it. But you know, since you brought it up, I think it is important to the character that she didn’t have a male authority figure. It keeps her from having to kowtow to a man, for anyone to have sovereign over her. Zeus is the big boss and all the mythological guys have to bow to him, but Hippolyta seemed a bit more of a guiding force, rather than a vindictive one. In theory, I preferred their relationship. Granted, all of these characters could be much different now than I’m remembering them, as the characters continue to evolve whether I read them or don’t, but I imagine they’ve stayed similar. Wonder Woman bows to no man.

WXL: Do you believe Marston’s ideas are still present in the character of Wonder Woman?

MATT: Absolutely. She is the standard-bearer for female superheroes. In any incarnation of her, they always have her strength, fortitude and force of will. These are key to her. He wanted to show that strength and femininity are not at odds with each other and she does that.

WXL: Which DC Comics superhero do you believe is best suited to play Hamlet?

MATT: I guess the obvious answer is Batman. The death of a loved one causes them to become single-mindedly focused on vengeance, taking their own sanity into doubt at times, and using cunning to defeat the wrongdoers. Maybe Green Arrow? Both of those guys can dwell in the dark places that Hamlet has to go. I guess that makes Claudius Ra’s Al Ghul.

Ooh, I would add that Essential Theatre did a show called Bat-Hamlet a few years ago, that focused on exactly that.It seemed to lend itself more to the Adam West Batman but it followed the train of thought you’re talking about.

WXL: What are you reading?

MATT: I’m reading She-Hulk, Nightcrawler, Afterlife with Archie, Astro City, and Saga. I go in and out of reading Walking Dead and Invincible and have lately mulled over catching back up on Fables. It’s hard for me to keep up with single issues so I mostly do trades these days.